The Portable Mark Twain

by Mark Twain

  We got a licking every time one of our snakes come in her way; and she allowed these lickings warn’t nothing to what she would do if we ever loaded up the place again with them. I didn’t mind the lickings, because they didn’t amount to nothing; but I minded the trouble we had, to lay in another lot. But we got them laid in, and all the other things; and you never see a cabin as blithesome as Jim’s was when they’d all swarm out for music and go for him. Jim didn’t like the spiders, and the spiders didn’t like Jim; and so they’d lay for him and make it mighty warm for him. And he said that between the rats, and the snakes, and the grindstone, where warn’t no room in bed for him, skasely; and when there was, a body couldn’t sleep, it was so lively, and it was always lively, he said, because they never all slept at one time, but took turn about, so when the snakes was asleep the rats was on deck, and when the rats turned in the snakes come on watch, so he always had one gang under him, in his way, and t’other gang having a circus over him, and if he got up to hunt a new place, the spiders would take a chance at him as he crossed over. He said if he ever got out, this time, he wouldn’t ever be a prisoner again, not for a salary.

  Well, by the end of three weeks, everything was in pretty good shape. The shirt was sent in early, in a pie, and every time a rat bit Jim he would get up and write a little in his journal whilst the ink was fresh; the pens was made, the inscriptions and so on was all carved on the grindstone; the bed-leg was sawed in two, and we had et up the sawdust, and it give us a most amazing stomach-ache. We reckoned we was all going to die, but didn’t. It was the most indigestible sawdust I ever see; and Tom said the same. But as I was saying, we’d got all the work done, now, at last; and we was all pretty much fagged out, too, but mainly Jim. The old man had wrote a couple of times to the plantation below Orleans to come and get their runaway nigger, but hadn’t got no answer, because there warn’t no such plantation; so he allowed he would advertise Jim in the St. Louis and New Orleans papers; and when he mentioned the St. Louis ones, it give me the cold shivers, and I see we hadn’t no time to lose. So Tom said, now for the nonnamous letters.

  “What’s them?” I says.

  “Warnings to the people that something is up. Sometimes it’s done one way, sometimes another. But there’s always somebody spying around, that gives notice to the governor of the castle. When Louis XVI. was going to light out of the Tooleries, a servant girl done it. It’s a very good way, and so is the nonnamous letters. We’ll use them both. And it’s usual for the prisoner’s mother to change clothes with him, and she stays in, and he slides out in her clothes. We’ll do that too.”

  “But looky here, Tom, what do we want to warn anybody for, that something’s up? Let them find it out for themselves—it’s their lookout.”

  “Yes, I know; but you can’t depend on them. It’s the way they’ve acted from the very start—left us to do everything. They’re so confiding and mullet-headed they don’t take notice of nothing at all. So if we don’t give them notice, there won’t be nobody nor nothing to interfere with us, and so after all our hard work and trouble this escape’ll go off perfectly flat: won’t amount to nothing—won’t be nothing to it.”

  “Well, as for me, Tom, that’s the way I’d like.”

  “Shucks,” he says, and looked disgusted. So I says:

  “But I ain’t going to make no complaint. Anyway that suits you suits me. What you going to do about the servant-girl?”

  “You’ll be her. You slide in, in the middle of the night, and hook that yaller girl’s frock.”

  “Why, Tom, that’ll make trouble next morning; because of course she prob’-bly hain’t got any but that one.”

  “I know; but you don’t want it but fifteen minutes, to carry the nonnamous letter and shove it under the front door.”

  “All right, then, I’ll do it; but I could carry it just as handy in my own togs.”

  “You wouldn’t look like a servant-girl then, would you?”

  “No, but there won’t be nobody to see what I look like, anyway. ”

  “That ain’t got nothing to do with it. The thing for us to do, is just to do our duty, and not worry about whether anybody sees us do it or not. Hain’t you got no principle at all?”

  “All right, I ain’t saying nothing; I’m the servant-girl. Who’s Jim’s mother?”

  “I’m his mother. I’ll hook a gown from Aunt Sally.”

  “Well, then, you’ll have to stay in the cabin when me and Jim leaves.”

  “Not much. I’ll stuff Jim’s clothes full of straw and lay it on his bed to represent his mother in disguise, and Jim’ll take the nigger woman’s gown off of me and wear it, and we’ll all evade together. When a prisoner of style escapes, it’s called an evasion. It’s always called so when a king escapes, f’rinstance. And the same with a king’s son; it don’t make no difference whether he’s a natural one or an unnatural one.”

  So Tom he wrote the nonnamous letter, and I smouched the yaller wench’s frock, that night, and put it on, and shoved it under the front door, the way Tom told me to. It said:

  Beware. Trouble is brewing. Keep a sharp lookout.

  UNKNOWN FRIEND.

  Next night we stuck a picture which Tom drawed in blood, of a skull and crossbones, on the front door; and next night another one of a coffin, on the back door. I never see a family in such a sweat. They couldn’t a been worse scared if the place had a been full of ghosts laying for them behind everything and under the beds and shivering through the air. If a door banged, Aunt Sally she jumped, and said “ouch!” if anything fell, she jumped and said “ouch!” if you happened to touch her, when she warn’t noticing, she done the same; she couldn’t face noway and be satisfied, because she allowed there was something behind her every time—so she was always a whirling around, sudden, and saying “ouch,” and before she’d get two-thirds around, she’d whirl back again, and say it again; and she was afraid to go to bed, but she dasn’t set up. So the thing was working very well, Tom said; he said he never see a thing work more satisfactory. He said it showed it was done right.

  So he said, now for the grand bulge! So the very next morning at the streak of dawn we got another letter ready, and was wondering what we better do with it, because we heard them say at supper they was going to have a nigger on watch at both doors all night. Tom he went down the lightning-rod to spy around; and the nigger at the back door was asleep, and he stuck it in the back of his neck and come back. This letter said:

  Don’t betray me, I wish to be your friend. There is a desprate gang of cutthroats from over in the Ingean Territory going to steal your runaway nigger to-night, and they have been trying to scare you so as you will stay in the house and not bother them. I am one of the gang, but have got religgion and wish to quit it and lead a honest life again, and will betray the helish design. They will sneak down from northards, along the fence, at midnight exact, with a false key, and go in the nigger’s cabin to get him. I am to be off a piece and blow a tin horn if I see any danger; but stead of that, I will BA like a sheep soon as they get in and not blow at all; then whilst they are getting his chains loose, you slip there and lock them in, and can kill them at your leasure. Don’t do anything but just the way I am telling you, if you do they will suspicion something and raise whoopjamboreehoo. I do not wish any reward but to know I have done the right thing.

  UNKNOWN FRIEND

  CHAPTER XL

  We was feeling pretty good, after breakfast, and took my canoe and went over the river a fishing, with a lunch, and had a good time, and took a look at the raft and found her all right, and got home late to supper, and found them in such a sweat and worry they didn’t know which end they was standing on, and made us go right off to bed the minute we was done supper, and wouldn’t tell us what the trouble was, and never let on a word about the new letter, but didn’t need to, because we knowed as much about it as anybody did, and as soon as we was half up stairs and her back was turned, we slid for the cellar cubboard and loaded up a good lunch
and took it up to our room and went to bed, and got up about half-past eleven, and Tom put on Aunt Sally’s dress that he stole and was going to start with the lunch, but says:

  “Where’s the butter?”

  “I laid out a hunk of it,” I says, “on a piece of corn-pone.”

  “Well, you left it laid out, then—it ain’t here.”

  “We can get along without it,” I says.

  “We can get along with it, too,” he says; “just you slide down cellar and fetch it. And then mosey right down the lightning-rod and come along. I’ll go and stuff the straw into Jim’s clothes to represent his mother in disguise, and be ready to ba like a sheep and shove soon as you get there.”

  So out he went, and down cellar went I. The hunk of butter, big as a person’s fist, was where I had left it, so I took up the slab of corn-pone with it on, and blowed out my light, and started up stairs, very stealthy, and got up to the main floor all right, but here comes Aunt Sally with a candle, and I clapped the truck in my hat, and clapped my hat on my head, and the next second she see me; and she says:

  “You been down cellar?”

  “Yes’m.”

  “What you been doing down there?”

  “Noth’n.”

  “Noth’n!”

  “No’m.”

  “Well, then, what possessed you to go down there, this time of night?”

  “I don’t know’m.”

  “You don’t know? Don’t answer me that way, Tom, I want to know what you been doing down there?”

  “I hain’t been doing a single thing, Aunt Sally, I hope to gracious if I have.”

  I reckoned she’d let me go, now, and as a generl thing she would; but I spose there was so many strange things going on she was just in a sweat about every little thing that warn’t yardstick straight; so she says, very decided:

  “You just march into that setting-room and stay there till I come. You been up to something you no business to, and I lay I’ll find out what it is before I’m done with you.”

  So she went away as I opened the door and walked into the setting-room. My, but there was a crowd there! Fifteen farmers, and every one of them had a gun. I was most powerful sick, and slunk to a chair and set down. They was setting around, some of them talking a little, in a low voice, and all of them fidgety and uneasy, but trying to look like they warn’t; but I knowed they was, because they was always taking off their hats, and putting them on, and scratching their heads, and changing their seats, and fumbling with their buttons. I warn’t easy myself, but I didn’t take my hat off, all the same.

  I did wish Aunt Sally would come, and get done with me, and lick me, if she wanted to, and let me get away and tell Tom how we’d overdone this thing, and what a thundering hornet’s nest we’d got ourselves into, so we could stop fooling around, straight off, and clear out with Jim before these rips got out of patience and come for us.

  At last she come, and begun to ask me questions, but I couldn’t answer them straight, I didn’t know which end of me was up; because these men was in such a fidget now, that some was wanting to start right now and lay for them desperadoes, and saying it warn’t but a few minutes to midnight; and others was trying to get them to hold on and wait for the sheep-signal; and here was aunty pegging away at the questions, and me a shaking all over and ready to sink down in my tracks I was that scared; and the place getting hotter and hotter, and the butter beginning to melt and run down my neck and behind my ears; and pretty soon, when one of them says, “I’m for going and getting in the cabin first, and right now, and catching them when they come,” I most dropped; and a streak of butter come a trickling down my forehead, and Aunt Sally she see it, and turns white as a sheet, and says:

  “For the land’s sake what is the matter with the child!—he’s got the brain fever as shore as you’re born, and they’re oozing out!”

  And everybody runs to see, and she snatches off my hat, and out comes the bread, and what was left of the butter, and she grabbed me, and hugged me, and says:

  “Oh, what a turn you did give me! and how glad and grateful I am it ain’t no worse; for luck’s against us, and it never rains but it pours, and when I see that truck I thought we’d lost you, for I knowed by the color and all, it was just like your brains would be if—Dear, dear, whyd’nt you tell me that was what you’d been down there for, I wouldn’t a cared. Now cler out to bed, and don’t lemme see no more of you till morning!”

  I was up the stairs in a second, and down the lightning-rod in another one, and shinning through the dark to the lean-to. I couldn’t hardly get my words out, I was so anxious; but I told Tom as quick as I could, we must jump for it, now, and not a minute to lose—the house full of men, yonder, with guns!

  His eyes just blazed; and he says:

  “No!—is that so? Ain’t it bully! Why, Huck if it was to do over again, I bet I could fetch two hundred! If we could put it off till—”

  “Hurry! hurry!” I says. “Where’s Jim?”

  “Right at your elbow; if you reach out your arm you can touch him. He’s dressed, and everything’s ready. Now we’ll slide out and give the sheep-signal.”

  But then we heard the tramp of men, coming to the door, and heard them begin to fumble with the padlock; and heard a man say:

  “I told you we’d be too soon; they haven’t come—the door is locked. Here, I’ll lock some of you into the cabin and you lay for ’em in the dark and kill ’em when they come; and the rest scatter around a piece, and listen if you can hear ’em coming.”

  So in they come, but couldn’t see us in the dark, and most trod on us whilst we was hustling to get under the bed. But we got under all right, and out through the hole, swift but soft—Jim first, me next, and Tom last, which was according to Tom’s orders. Now we was in the lean-to, and heard trampings close by outside. So we crept to the door, and Tom stopped us there and put his eye to the crack, but couldn’t make out nothing, it was so dark; and whispered and said he would listen for the steps to get further, and when he nudged us Jim must glide out first, and him last. So he set his ear to the crack and listened, and listened, and listened, and the steps a scraping around, out there, all the time; and at last he nudged us, and we slid out, and stooped down, not breathing, and not making the least noise, and slipped stealthy towards the fence, in Injun file, and got to it, all right, and me and Jim over it; but Tom’s britches catched fast on a splinter on the top rail, and then he hear the steps coming, so he had to pull loose, which snapped the splinter and made a noise; and as he dropped in our tracks and started, somebody sings out:

  “Who’s that? Answer, or I’ll shoot!”

  But we didn’t answer; we just unfurled our heels and shoved. Then there was a rush, and a bang, bang, bang! and the bullets fairly whizzed around us! We heard them sing out:

  “Here they are! They’ve broke for the river! after ’em boys! And turn loose the dogs!”

  So here they come, full tilt. We could hear them, because they wore boots, and yelled, but we didn’t wear no boots, and didn’t yell. We was in the path to the mill; and when they got pretty close onto us, we dodged into the bush and let them go by, and then dropped in behind them. They’d had all the dogs shut up, so they wouldn’t scare off the robbers; but by this time somebody had let them loose, and here they come, making pow-wow enough for a million; but they was our dogs; so we stopped in our tracks till they catched up; and when they see it warn’t nobody but us, and no excitement to offer them, they only just said howdy, and tore right ahead towards the shouting and clattering; and then we up steam again and whizzed along after them till we was nearly to the mill, and then struck up through the bush to where my canoe was tied, and hopped in and pulled for dear life towards the middle of the river, but didn’t make no more noise than we was obleeged to. Then we struck out, easy and comfortable, for the island where my raft was; and we could hear them yelling and barking at each other all up and down the bank, till we was so far away the sounds got dim and died out. And
when we stepped onto the raft, I says:

  “Now, old Jim, you’re a free man again, and I bet you won’t ever be a slave no more.”

  “En a mighty good job it wuz, too, Huck. It ’uz planned beautiful, en it ’uz done beautiful; en dey ain’t nobody kin git up a plan dat’s mo’ mixed-up en splendid den what dat one wuz.”

  We was all as glad as we could be, but Tom was the gladdest of all, because he had a bullet in the calf of his leg.

  When me and Jim heard that, we didn’t feel so brash as what we did before. It was hurting him considerble, and bleeding; so we laid him in the wigwam and tore up one of the duke’s shirts for to bandage him, but he says:

  “Gimme the rags, I can do it myself. Don’t stop, now; don’t fool around here, and the evasion booming along so handsome; man the sweeps, and set her loose! Boys, we done it elegant! —’deed we did. I wish we’d a had the handling of Louis XVI., there wouldn’t a been no ‘Son of Saint Louis, ascend to heaven!’ wrote down in his biography: no, sir, we’d a whooped him over the border—that’s what we’d a done with him—and done it just as slick as nothing at all, too. Man the sweeps—man the sweeps!”